Spoonerism

I have a problem. I have a friend; and no she is not the problem. A friend of mine and a colleague for some time; a beautiful woman with a unique name Shiji; or is it Jishi? I am confused and that is the problem. Whenever we meet I ponder a while before uttering her name. I earnestly try to address her correctly and avoid embarrassment for both of us. I toss both the versions in my mind for a while before addressing her.  It makes me so nervous and this leads to assured failure on my part. The jeer appearing invariably on her face loudly tells me that once again I have failed miserably. Each time I profusely apologise to her; and even though I genuinely feel sorry for my predicament, it is providing me only a diminishing return. Now a day she started to take it on its stride and gives me a beautiful smile instead; I am put in to more problems as I am deprived of the feedback. Previously the curled up lip is a sure tell tale sign of my bungling.

William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930) was having this kind of a handicap. As a matter of fact he has even developed this into an art and the world has christened it after him. “Spoonerism” as it is now known is an error in speech or deliberate play of words in which corresponding consonants, vowels or morphemes are switched. There is any number of examples and though apocryphally attributed to Mr. Spooner he disowns most of them. Some famous examples are as follows. “Three cheers to our queer old dean” (for “dear old queen”) referring to Queen Victoria, "A blushing crow." (crushing blow), "A well-boiled icicle" (well-oiled bicycle), "Is the bean dizzy?" etc.   Now a day spoonerism is widely used in music, theatre, cinema, broadcasting etc and even in profane expressions in order to hide its raw nature. When profanity is mentioned; in Malayalam it is nearly used exclusively for this purpose.  There are experts who can coin any irreverent expression into a harmless one doing this chorichu mallal (marichu chollal)

Now coming back to my problem; spoonerism is not my only problem though I frequently address, for example,  Anil as Sunil, etc. My main problem is of name dropping. (Let me hasten to add here that by the usage “Name Dropping” I mean forgetting names of those known to me and not the euphemism for showing off my celebrity contact).   It is said that once you are on the wrong side of fifty these things start showing their head very frequently.  Surprisingly all those things stored in your memory, way back in your youth are remaining intact. You are prone to forget names of those whom you have met just a day back. It is said that you should jog your brain regularly; and though I comply it by doing cross-word, Sudoku etc and maintaining the habit of reading intact by keeping that idiot box in your drawing room beyond the remote’s range; all efforts have their limitations.

I came across a technique of ‘association’ to overcome this difficulty to a great extend. It is a very simple way to remember things especially the names. If you are meeting someone by name say Rajan for example associate him with your good old primary schoolmate Rajan about whom you have a vivid memory. So next time when you meet this new person you are bound to remember your school chum and hence remember his name.  During my morning walks I used to come across a couple of college going youngsters with whom I just had a nodding acquaintance. For courtesy sake I asked and registered their name using this technique. They stopped coming for the walk as soon as their colleges re-opened. After a two year gap I again met one of them in the market and stopped to have a chat.  First thing I did was to address him by his name and enquire about his friend (also by name). You should have seen the expression on his face when I addressed him correctly.  He was flabbergasted and at the same time very happy as well. He could not believe that I will recall his name even after a two year gap. His happiness did really make my day. 

But the problem I mentioned earlier is still persisting because there is a catch. In olden days every name either had some meaning or some connection. The modern names are as alien to me as Greek is for a bumpkin. Recently I saw the list of names of the pupils of my wife’s school.  I felt that they are all of Chinese descent.  How can you associate these names with anything which you will be able to recall?

I am still pondering and searching for a solution for I do not want to antagonize anymore my good friend Shiji.....? or is it Jishi?.

Here I go again.